Tech
Pentium 4 v Athlon XP: Internet performance
Web pagesWhen representing HTML pages, AMD’s Athlon XP has its nose in front. An Athlon XP/2000+ is already as fast as the Pentium 4/2533.
![zd-defaultauthor-kai-schmerer.jpg](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/3ee36fc7c9c997c5301bb60421a277bae0104c10/2014/12/04/8fd7a393-7b6a-11e4-9a74-d4ae52e95e57/zd-defaultauthor-kai-schmerer.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&frame=1&height=192&width=192)
Web pages
When representing HTML pages, AMD’s Athlon XP has its nose in front. An Athlon XP/2000+ is already as fast as the Pentium 4/2533. With a performance difference of 43.5 percent between the fastest (Athlon/XP2100+) and slowest (Pentium 4/2000) processors, a CPU upgrade is particularly noticeable.
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-htm.gif)
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-htm.gif)
Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.05
The benefit of optimisation for the Pentium 4 is shown by the Acrobat Reader 5.05 test, in which the fastest AMD processor (Athlon XP/2100+) fails to beat even a Pentium 4/2200. This test also shows a large performance difference between fastest and slowest processors, at 80.1 percent. A CPU upgrade is worthwhile with this application.
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-pdf.gif)
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-pdf.gif)
XML pages
The fastest Intel processors just about grab the top spot when rendering XML pages. Here the Pentium 4 profits above all from the faster 533MHz FSB frequency. With the 400MHz FSB, the Pentium 4/2400 is slightly slower than an Athlon XP/1800+.
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-xml.gif)
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-xml.gif)
JavaScript
Even the biggest AMD fans may be surprised that the Athlon XP/1800+ is faster than a Pentium 4/2533. But when compiling Internet pages with JavaScript, it’s true. The Athlon XP/2100+ renders JavaScript pages more than twice as fast as the Pentium 4/2000 with 256KB of Level 2 cache.
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-jav.gif)
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-jav.gif)
Flash
The Pentium 4/2533 with Rambus memory is the fastest at rendering Flash animations, but the Athlon XP/2100+ is faster than a Pentium 4/2200. This example shows the impact of main memory type: although the P4/2200 with Rambus is still in the top group, the same chip with DDR memory drops back behind the Athlon processors.
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-fla.gif)
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-fla.gif)
Shockwave
The difference in performance between the fastest and slowest processors is very small when rendering Shockwave animations. The difference between an Athlon XP/1800+ at 99.2fps and a Pentium 4/2533 and 102.9 fps will hardly be noticeable to most users.
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-shw.gif)
![](/i/story/20/40/000364/p4-ath-ib-shw.gif)